Debian 9 ‘Stretch’ GNU/Linux Distro Released — Here Are The New Features And Download Links

Short Bytes: The Debian Release team has finally released the Debian 9.0 “Stretch” stable GNU/Linux distribution. Named after Toy Story’s rubber toy octopus, Stretch, this release will remain supported for 5 years. Debian 9 ships with Linux kernel 4.9, new digital forensics tools, GNOME 3.22, default MariaDB, etc. You can either update your exisiting installation or download the new installation media from the project’s website.

Last month, we reported about the Debian Release Team’s plans to ship the final release of Debian 9.0 “Stretch” GNU/Linux distribution on June 17. Well, acting well on their promise, they have shipped the new stable version, i.e., Debian 9, code named Stretch. For those who don’t know, Debian codenames are based on the characters in the famous animated movie Toy Story. This release is named after the glittery purple rubber toy octopus, Stretch.

After a combined effort of Debian Security team and Debian LTS team, this release will be supported for the next 5 years. The Release Team has also dedicated this release to Debian founder Ian Murdock, who passed away in December 2015.

Debian 9 could be easily called one of the most important Linux distro releases of 2017 because in the upcoming months, tons of other distros will be based on it. As expected, Debian 9 features are many in number and let’s tell you about them in brief:

Debian 9 ‘Stretch’ Features

New releases of desktop environments

Debian 9 Stretch Linux distribution has been released in different flavors. As a result, it comes with GNOME 3.22, KDE 5.8, MATE 1.16, and Xfce 4.12.

Linux kernel 4.9

MariaDB is default

In Debian 9, the default, MySQL variant is now MariaDB. Once a user performs an upgrade to Debian 9, the change from MySQL 5.5 or 5.6 to the MariaDB 10.1 will automatically take place.

Firefox and Thunderbird

Another significant Debian 9 feature comes in the form of the return of Firefox and Thunderbird, which are replacing Iceweasel and Icedove.

New important verification feature

An important verification feature in Debian 9 has been added with the help of the Reproducible Builds project. With its help, 90% of the source package build bit-for-bit identical binary packages, which makes the overall Linux experience more secure.

‘modern’ branch of GnuPG

Debian 9 Stretch is also the first Debian version which features ‘modern’ branch of GnuPG in ‘gnupg’ package.

Debugging made easier

The debug packages too have been made easier to use. A new ‘dbg-sym’ repository has been added to the APT source list. It will provide debug symbols automatically.

UEFI support improved

The UEFI support, which was introduced in Wheezy release, has been imporved in Debian 9. It also supports Debian installaiton on 32-bit UEFI firmware with a 64-bit kernel.

New forensic tools

Updated software packages

It goes without saying that Debian 9 ships with tons of updated software packages. Some of them are:

Apache 2.4.25,

Chromium 59.0.3071.86

GIMP 2.8.18

GNU Compiler Collection 6.3

GnuPG 2.1

Golang 1.7

LibreOffice 5.2

OpenJDK 8

Perl 5.24

PHP 7.0

Python 2.7.13 and 3.5.3

Ruby 2.3

Samba 4.5

systemd 232

Tomcat 8.5

Xen Hypervisor

X.Org Server 1.19.2

Download Debian 9 Stretch: Live CD and Torrent

You can go ahead and download Debian 9 in different flavors — GNOME, KDE, LXDE, Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE. A total of ten architectures is supported by this release. You can download the live installation media or torrent files by using this link.

So, are you going to try out Debian 9 ‘Stretch?’ Don’t forget to share your experiences with us.